Retired Army Col. David “Wil” Riggins. Accused of rape by a blogger who attended West Point with him, he sued for defamation and a jury awarded him $8.4 million. (Photo courtesy of David “Wil” Riggins)

Col. David “Wil” Riggins, after a highly decorated Army career that included multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on the verge of promotion to brigadier general in July 2013 when he got a phone call at the Pentagon from the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division to come in for a meeting. Once there, he learned that a blogger in Washington state had just accused him of raping her, when both were cadets at West Point in 1986. An investigation was underway.

Riggins waived his right to an attorney and immediately gave a statement denying any sexual assault of the woman, Susan Shannon of Everett, Wash. Shannon also cooperated with the CID investigation, which could not “prove or disprove Ms. Shannon’s allegation she was raped,” the CID report concluded. But in the spring of 2014, with the armed forces facing heavy criticism for their handling of sexual assault cases, Secretary of the Army John McHugh recommended removing Riggins from the list for promotion to general. Riggins promptly retired.

Then, Riggins sued Shannon for defamation, claiming that every aspect of her rape claim on the West Point campus was “provably false,” and that she wrote two blog posts and a Facebook post “to intentionally derail [his] promotion” to brigadier general. During a six-day trial that ended Aug. 1, a jury in Fairfax County, Va., heard from both Riggins and Shannon at length. And after 2½ hours of deliberation, they sided emphatically with Riggins, awarding him $8.4 million in damages, an extraordinary amount for a defamation case between two private citizens. The jury ordered Shannon to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for injury to his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages, “to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again,” according to one of the jurors.

In Virginia, punitive damages are limited to $350,000, and lawyers for both sides said the compensatory damages would likely be reduced to $2 million, leaving a final judgment of $2.3 million against Shannon, a stay-at-home mother of three teenagers. The verdict came just days after a jury in Dallas awarded more than $1 million in damages to a wedding photographer who was harshly criticized by a beauty blogger, causing the photographer’s business to collapse.

Shannon, 52, said she was devastated by the verdict and fearful for her family’s future. “I feel like I’m a financial slave for the rest of my life” to Riggins, Shannon said. “I told the truth in my article and at trial.” She and her lawyer, Benjamin Trichilo, said in an interview that they felt Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Daniel E. Ortiz wrongly prevented them from presenting witnesses and evidence about Riggins’s past and the Army CID investigation findings, and they plan to appeal.

Riggins, 52, said the jury took the right steps toward restoring his life. “This journey we’ve been on the last four years,” Riggins said, “it’s been a nightmare. … The large dollar amount is meaningless. All I was looking for was the opportunity to be vindicated, to set the record straight, to take every action to get my reputation back to where it was before the 15th of July [2013], when she published that false accusation.”

The scope and speed of the Internet can compound the damage for the subject of a false story, and the liability for the author, according to Tom Clare, a defamation lawyer who represented University of Virginia assistant dean Nicole Eramo in her lawsuit against Rolling Stone. “People really understand the value that a reputation has,” Clare said. “Especially in today’s Internet environment when even a blog post or a tweet can have such a broad impact. It can literally go around the world. And if something out there is false, juries are prepared to issue significant awards.”

Riggins now lives in Alexandria, Va., and works as a pilot for the Federal Aviation Administration. Both he and Shannon entered the United States Military Academy in 1983. Shannon resigned from the academy in the spring of 1986, near the end of her junior year, and claims she did so shortly after being raped by Riggins, although she denied any sexual assault to West Point officials at the time, court records show. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1989, married in 1990 and had three children.

Shannon wrote in a court filing that “the demons from the rape haunted [me] for years” and that a “decade of suicidal depression led me to Christ.” She writes frequently on her blog, Short Little Rebel, about her Christian faith. She has acknowledged staking out controversial positions on her blog, including that the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., was “a planned event” and that “I believe our GOVERNMENT shot those kids and teachers and used Adam Lanza and his family to pull it off.” That post was not presented to the jury in Fairfax, but other inflammatory comments by Shannon were placed in evidence, Trichilo said, while witnesses who were prepared to testify against Riggins’s past were not allowed to testify.

Meanwhile, Riggins graduated from West Point in 1987, was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, and was awarded a Bronze Star for his combat role in the 1990 invasion of Iraq. He joined the Army Rangers, began rising through the command ranks, served two tours in Afghanistan in 2003 and was promoted to colonel in 2007. He was working at the Pentagon as chief of Army weapon system investments when his nomination to become a one-star general was announced July 2, 2013.

Thirteen days later, Shannon published a blog post titled “The Rape of a Female Cadet at West Point: Me.” She noted the recent media reports about sexual assault in the military, and wrote that “both I and my roommate were raped at West Point — and we never reported it. The man who raped me, Will [sic] Riggins, class of 1987, is now a Colonel in the Army. The rape is the reason I left West Point. So, while his military career is soaring, I left mine far behind.” She reported that she “was out cold from stupidly drinking myself unconscious at Eisenhower Hall” after being provided with “FREE beer” on the West Point campus.

Eight days after that, Shannon published a second blog post, revealing that she had been contacted by the Army CID to investigate her claims. “I didn’t want to give them a statement,” Shannon said, noting that she did not want to hurt Riggins’s family or put her own family through a trial. But she said the investigators pressured her and revealed to her that Riggins was in line for promotion to general. “They appealed to my sense of duty,” she said. “That’s when I agreed to do it.”

Shannon said she didn’t know that Riggins was up for a promotion until the investigators told her. “I had no idea, I don’t read the military press,” she said. But one of her own witnesses testified that Shannon did know, and that it was the motivation for her writing her first blog post. Shannon said the witness misunderstood the question, but the information remained unchallenged for the jury to consider.

The CID also contacted Riggins. A report in court records shows that Riggins described a consensual sexual encounter with Shannon after a Halloween party in 1983, and a short relationship with an amicable breakup. Riggins said he had no significant contact with her in 1986. In Washington state, Shannon told investigators there was no sex or relationship in 1983, only a rape after Riggins saw her staggering out of a pedestrian tunnel on campus in the spring of 1986. She claimed Riggins offered her a ride in his car, and that she had no memory of the actual assault, although she said Riggins “smugly admitted he did indeed rape” Shannon, according to a Fairfax court filing.

Shannon called Riggins’s story about the 1983 encounter “a complete fabrication.” She said she presented a witness, another cadet, who testified that he — the witness — drove her home from the Halloween party. Shannon stands by her version of the events in 1986.

“Everything in that blog post was provably false,” said Stephen Horvath, Riggins’s lawyer, “and could not have happened.” He said no free beer was provided on the West Point campus, that drinking was prohibited by cadets, that Riggins did not have a car in 1986, would not have been allowed to drive it on campus, and that anyone emerging from the pedestrian tunnel couldn’t have been seen from the road. Shannon’s claims that her grades plunged after the event and that she returned her class ring were also untrue, Horvath said.

The CID investigation found that, in light of the vastly different stories provided by Riggins and Shannon, and interviews of more than 30 people from that era, there was no “testimonial or physical evidence to corroborate Ms. Shannon or Col. Riggins’ version.” Trichilo said the jury should have been allowed to hear that Riggins’s version of events also was not substantiated. But shortly before the trial began, the judge ordered references to the findings on Riggins’s version struck from the trial, Trichilo said.

Riggins’s nomination for brigadier general was returned to McHugh, the secretary of the Army, who wrote that “I do not have faith and confidence in Colonel Riggins’ judgment and character. Consequently, I do not support his promotion to brigadier general.”

With Congress furious at the failure of military authorities to crack down on sexual assault, “there was absolutely tremendous fear,” Riggins said, “that had to do with loss of the Uniform Code of Military Justice jurisdiction by commanders in the Army.” Horvath added, “Once the allegation of rape had been made, there was no way Col. Riggins was going to get the position at that time, in that atmosphere.” As an expert witness at trial, Horvath called retired Major General Peter Fuller to testify that the rape allegation would have caused Riggins’s promotion to be rejected. Horvath said Riggins’s income, both as a general and as a retired general, would have been much greater than that of a colonel.

Trichilo said Fuller should not have been allowed to testify to his opinion about the impact of the investigation without firm data. He said that enabled the jury to speculate about what damages the investigation caused.

The trial began July 24 with the testimony of Riggins and his wife, Nancy, and later in the week Shannon took the stand. Riggins testified a second time on rebuttal, and closing arguments were held on the afternoon of Aug. 1. As night fell, the jury told Judge Ortiz they wanted to deliberate that night, rather than return in the morning. Court records show they began at 6:30 p.m. and returned at 9:04 p.m.

“Honestly,” said juror Marshall Reinsdorf, “we thought who was telling the truth was too obvious to be discussing. We held a vote, and everybody believed the colonel. The only argument was how big the damages were going to be.” Of the four women and three men on the jury, two other jurors declined to comment, two jurors did not return messages and two could not be reached.

Reinsdorf said he had numerous problems with Shannon’s testimony. “Her story had so many details in it that couldn’t have been true,” he said. “They started questioning her about the [pedestrian] tunnel, she kind of backed off. … She was so evasive. It was unbelievable.”

Horvath had not suggested a dollar figure for damages, so the jury came up with roughly $3 million for his compensatory damages, Reinsdorf said. For punitive damages, the jury decided, “We need to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again,” Reinsdorf said. He said one juror suggested that as the rationale for the $5 million figure, and “basically got unanimous support for that.” Reinsdorf said the jury agreed that Shannon’s accusation derailed Riggins’s promotion. “There was no doubt in anybody’s mind the colonel had made his case,” Reinsdorf said. “He was believable.”

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.